Sports: [Sports-Music_Programming] Injured Players and Injury Timeouts

When faced with an injured player, you will find that each injury is it’s own situation bringing up the question, “Should I play some music?” The answer, at some point is yet, but what do you play and when do you play it?

If you saw what caused the injury, you can grade it on that, but even then what looks to be an innocent slide into the boards could turn into a concussion with a player who was knocked out. You don’t know what the player is going through, what he/she is feeling or what is going on with them. You’re behind the sound board playing music. A good rule of thumb on music during these timeouts is something light and instrumental. The fewer words, the better so the person who is injured does not confuse the words in the song with what the training staff is telling them.

You must also remember that the training personnel need to communicate with the person who is down. In a recent incident in Atlanta when their goalie Ondre Pavlich mysteriously collapsed on the ice, nothing should have been played and by accounts from television, it was hard to tell if any music was played. This is an emergency situation and all attention needs to be on the rescue personnel. Playing music in this situation would not have been good.

Now, there are situations when you see someone trip and fall, they are down because they had the wind knocked out of them or took an embarrassing tumble and want to stay down for a second. How do you know? Again, you can see this if you watched it happen, but even then you can’t always tell. Play it light until you see the person sitting up, smiling or you feel the situation is no longer urgent. If you hear of an ambulance needing to be called, no music or announcing. Do not give updates or play-by-play of what is going on because it is simply speculation.

In an incident a few years ago at a Fairfax County high school, the P. A. announcer announced a player who was injured on the field and identified them by name from the roster over the P. A. system. The problem was, the player had to switch jerseys before the game so the concerned fans heard the name, but could not see the number of the seriously injured player. The mother of the wrong player was called and she frantically arrived at the game only to find out that it was someone else’s son. The correct mother was called and she found her child at the hospital, but a lot later than initially expected. When the emergency personnel were loading the player, the coach heard that someone had called his mother so he figured that it was the right parent being called.

You have to be careful in injury situations. Evaluate each one for what it is and don’t allow any noise if it’s serious. If you’re playing music and the ambulance has to be called or trainers ask for silence, turn the music down slowly until it’s off. If someone gets out a cell phone and you can see they are making a call from the situation, turn the music down and off so they can hear and be heard on the phone.

If you have someone that says, “I want music any time there is an injury,” they don’t understand game operations though they may think they do.

When Tony Saunders was attempting a comeback with the St. Petersburg Devil Rays in 2000, he broke his arm throwing a pitch for the second time in 18 months. Nothing was played on the P. A. system due to the scope of the situation. Even though Saunders was writhing in pain on the mound, nothing was played as this would have distracted from the emergency personnel on field tending to him.

Just a few things to think about.

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